MACBETH APPEARANCE VS REALITY Flashcards
“When the battle’s lost, and won,”
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” oxymoron
“So foul and fair a day I have not seen’
The Witches are the first exposure we get as an audience to the chaotic and inverted world of Macbeth.
there are two sides to every story. One side loses, but one side wins.
Here Shakespeare warns his audience that no one and nothing can be trusted. In a wider sense, he suggests that there are no certainties when it comes to morality. What appears to be good on the surface may not be.
signaling how his fate is tied to the confusion of contradiction. Shakespeare foreshadows his indecision and moral ambiguity. Furthermore, the use of “foul” and “fair” echoes back to the Witches’ opening chorus, associating his character with the supernatural. We can guess that Macbeth might be an example of someone who seems fair but “is foul”.
“Instruments of darkness”
Shakespeare uses the Witches to show how human greed makes us vulnerable to deception and betrayal. Early after their meeting with the Witches, Banquo reminds Macbeth,
This shows that humans can be easily fooled by lies if they are given with small truths. These contradictions confuse us and lead us astray.
Look like the time, bear welcome in your eye, / Your hand, your tongue,” (1.5).
as the play progresses we see the inner workings of her mind and realise internally she is stereotypically masculine. As she becomes more powerful and masculine she is ultimately destroyed by her weak mind.
Her use of physical features, such as
“eye”, and “hand” emphasise the importance of outward appearance. The verb
“look” shows how he doesn’t have to be “like the time”, only imitate it.
“Look like th’innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t,” (1.5)
The juxtaposition of “flower”, which connotes femininity, with “serpent”, which connotes masculinity and trickery, shows how there can be a dangerous divide between a person’s outward appearance and inward nature.
* “Serpent” is an allusion to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, where it is a symbol of the devil.
Shakespeare demonstrates how appearances cannot be trusted because they are moldable, meaning they offer no insight into the reality of a person.
“That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, / Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,”
Shakespeare shows how appearances can be used for acts of self-denial as well as deception, keeping the conscience clear even though a crime has been committed. After asking the spirits to take away her inner femininity
shows how she wants to use appearances to her advantage by blinding others to her actions.
- The personification in “my keen knife see not the wound it makes” implies there is a level of self-deception to her plan, where her “knife” appears to be a symbol for herself.
- The semantic field of darkness, furthermore, implies our reliance on what we can see makes us ignorant and gullible. Shakespeare could be criticising his society’s focus on obvious, black and white truths.
Ultimately, though, her deceit is met with fitting consequences, as she is caught between reality and imagination. Her hallucinations are symbolic of her losing control of herself, which is ironic as she has tried so hard within the play to control everyone else. By the end she cannot control her mind and is ultimately destroyed by It
“O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman,” (1.2).
first descriptions of Macbeth we get is from Duncan
Macbeth appears to be the perfect subiect and kinsman. “Valiant” and “worthy” are adjectives associated with honour and nobility, particularly in the context of the royal court and the Code of Chivalry, which the Renaissance admired. This is situational irony because we soon see that Macbeth is neither “valiant” nor “worthy”, demonstrating that the way someone appears through their words and actions reveals nothing about what lays underneath the surface.
False face must hide what the false heart doth know,” (1.7),
rhyming couplet suggesting he finds contentment in this plan.
Shakespeare implies deception is a form of playing God because people believe they can defy “time” and truth, the most powerful forces
humanity is subjected to. The juxtaposition between “false face” and “false heart” highlights the divide between someone’s outward looks and true nature.
Must lave our honours in these flattering streams
These metaphors about “honour” and “fairest show” suggest compassion is a performance or scientific process that can be reproduced without meaning behind it. The verbs “disguise” and “hide” imply the Macbeths’ lies shield them.
This shows how they are scared of being discovered and losing their good reputations.
Shakespeare suggests people use their appearances to protect themselves from judgement, accusing society of being afraid of intimacy.
Like his wife, Macbeth suffers from his use of appearances because he begins to lose the ability to distinguish between reality and appearance. Both the “dagger’s” (2.1) and the “Ghost of Banquo’s” (3.4) apparition depict his eroding sense of reality. His attempts to suppress and “disguise” the bad, corrupt aspects of himself begin to manifest as morbid hallucinations and ghostly beings, suggesting that no matter how much you try to reform yourself, you can never truly change who you are at your core. Because of his dishonesty, he cannot believe in his own thinking. The hardest struggle between appearance and reality is going on inside Macbeth’s head.
